Copyright © 1984 by
Colossian
Problems
Part 4:
Christ as Conqueror
and
Reconciler
F.
F. Bruce
Cosmic
Reconciliation
In the Christ hymn of Colossians
1:15-20 Christ is cele-
brated as the Agent of God in both creation and
reconciliation.
His
agency in creation is attested by other New Testament
writers; it is emphasized in the letter to the
Colossians as part
of the argument that those who have direct access
to God through
Christ
and are united with Christ have no need to worship beings
or forces, which, however powerful, are part of
the created order
which He brought into existence.
The idea of Christ's being the Agent
in reconciliation, how-
ever, is peculiar to Paul among the New Testament
writers. Paul is
the only one to mention reconciliation in the
theological sense. It
is God who has "reconciled us to Himself
through Christ," he told
the Christians in
in
Son" (Rom. 5:10). Paul speaks of himself
and his colleagues as
entrusted with "the ministry of
reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18). The
gospel which they proclaim is "the word of reconciliation"
(2 Cor.
5:19)
because in it the invitation is sounded on Christ's behalf:
"Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). Those who respond in
faith
to the invitation have thereby "received the
reconciliation" (Rom.
5:11);
they "have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ"
(Rom.
5:1).
In speaking of the ministry of
reconciliation, Paul makes
one statement which seems to envisage a much wider
body than
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1984
believers as being embraced in God's reconciling
work: "God was
in Christ reconciling a world to Himself" (2
Cor. 5:19). The
adverbial phrase "in Christ" modifies
the periphrastic verb "was
reconciling." Though the instrumental e]n
is used (instead of dia<
to express agency), yet Christ is once again
stated to be the Agent
in God's work of reconciliation. The translation
"a world" has
been offered, rather than "the world,"
simply because the accusa-
tive ko<smon lacks the article in
Greek; it is not that one ko<smoj
among several is the object of the reconciliation.
The ko<smoj in
question may be the world of humanity (as in John
3:16-17;
12:47)
or it may have an even wider reference, like the creation
which, according to Romans 8:21, is to "be set
free from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children
of God." But the analogy of Romans 11:15,
where the "reconcilia-
tion of the world" (katallagh>
ko<smou)
is the sequel to
rejection, suggests that it is the human family as
a whole that is
in view.
It may be observed in passing that
the tense of the verb
"reconcile" in 2 Corinthians 5:19 is not aorist or
perfect; it is
imperfect, and periphrastic imperfect at that (h#n . . .
katalla<sswn). The reconciliation of
the ko<smoj is a continuing
process, not yet an accomplished fact. Its
completion, as Romans
11:15
indicates, lies in the future. When the reconciliation
of
believers is spoken of, it is indeed an
accomplished fact: God
who, in Christ, is in the process of
"reconciling the ko<smoj to
Himself"
(2 Cor. 5:19), has through that same Christ “reconciled
us [believers] to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:18). While
the reconciliation
of believers is a completed work, the
reconciliation of the world
is not.
But the reconciliation in view in
Colossians 1:20, at the end
of the Christ hymn, cannot be equated simply with
the reconcilia-
tion of the world in 2 Corinthians 5:19 or Romans
11:15, nor yet
with the liberating of creation in Romans 8:21. Too
much should
not be made of the fact that the reconciliation of
Colossians 1:20
is expressed by means of the double compound a]pokatalla<ssw.
The
same compound is used of the reconciliation of believers to
God
in Colossians 1:22 and of the reconciliation of believing Jews
and Gentiles in one body in Ephesians 2:16.
The statement at the end of the
Christ hymn is that God,
who was pleased in all His fullness to dwell in
Christ, was pleased
also "through Him to reconcile all things to
Himself whether on
earth or in heaven, making peace through the blood of
His cross"
Christ as Conqueror and
Reconciler 293
(Col.
1:20). The "all things" which are thus to be reconciled
embrace things on earth and things in heaven,
just as the "all
things" which were created through Christ embrace
"things in
heaven and on earth" (Col. 1:16). The parallelism
between these
two references to "all things" leaves no
doubt that the same
totality is intended in reconciliation as in
creation. The "all
things" which are to be reconciled to God through
Christ include
"things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions
or
principalities or powers," all of
which are said to "have been
created through Him" in the first place
(Col. 1:16). But if we have
regard to the portrayal of principalities and powers
later in this
letter (and in Ephesians too, for that matter), it is
not easy to
think of them as "reconciled" in the same
sense as believers.
In fact the verb in the Christ hymn
has a rather different
sense from what Paul normally gives it. If the Christ
hymn is an
independent composition which Paul incorporates into
his argu-
ment, then the situation is intelligible. Paul
leaves the word as
it is; there was no need to change it, for it
spoke of the peace
effected by Christ through the shedding of His
blood on the cross.
Indeed
he goes on immediately to speak of the reconciliation of
believers through that same death — a
reconciliation necessary
because they had formerly been "alienated
and hostile in mind,"
practicing evil works (Col. 1:21). The
principalities and powers
have also been hostile, malignantly so, but there is
no hint that in
their case reconciliation replaces hostility with
friendship. As
was stated in the second article in the series,2
reconciliation
applied to them means more of what is,
understood as
tion, the imposing of peace, something brought about
by con-
quest. There is thus a close association between the portrayal of
Christ
as Reconciler in the Christ hymn and the portrayal of
Christ
as Conqueror elsewhere in the letter. Perhaps Paul left
the verb "to reconcile" unaltered in the
Christ hymn (Col. 1:20)
because he was about to make it plain in the
following exposition
that the reconciliation of the hostile powers
involved their defeat.
Cosmic Triumph
The portrayal of Christ as Conqueror
is given in Colossians
2:15,
the climax of a passage which reviews what God has done
for His people in Christ. "When you were dead
in your trespasses,"
says Paul, "uncircumcised Gentiles as you were,
God
brought you to life together with Him [Christ].
He forgave us all
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Bibliotheca Sacra — October-December
1984
our trespasses, he blotted out the bond which stood
against us,
ordinances and all, the bond that was contrary to
us; he has
taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. He
stripped the
principalities and the powers and made
a public exhibition of
them, triumphing over them by it" (Col.
2:13-15).
This passage illustrates the
interdependence of exegesis and
translation (both being inseparable elements in
interpretation).
To
translate a passage it is necessary first to understand it. For
example, the last two words in the translation
just offered are "by
it" (meaning "by the cross"). But e]n au]t&? might well be rendered
"by Him" (meaning "by Christ"). If God is the
subject throughout,
then "by Him" or "in Him" is
appropriate. The victory, like the
creation and the reconciliation, is the work of
God in Christ. But
it is often held that there is an unobtrusive change
of subject
from God to Christ in the course of the passage:
Lightfoot, for
example, argues that the description of what was
accomplished
on the cross more naturally suggests Christ as the
subject, and
he locates the change of subject at the words
"has taken it out of
the way" in verse 14.3 Such a
change of subject might come about
if verses 14-15 include the quotation of a hymn
celebrating in
pictorial terms the redemption achieved by Christ
on the cross;
but this, of course, must remain hypothetical.4
The statement (at the end of v. 13)
that God "forgave us all our
trespasses" is nonfigurative, but it is
followed by figurative
expressions which challenge the interpreter. What is
"the bond
which stood against us, ordinances and all, the bond that
was
opposed to us"? God's blotting out of this
bond appears to be
identical with His forgiveness of believers'
trespasses; but what
precisely is the bond? It might be said to be the
signed acknowl-
edgment of indebtedness, the bond which stood
"in our name" —
if that is a permissible rendering of the phrase kaq
] h[mw?n
(in to>
kaq ]
h[mw?n xeiro<grafon).
This rendering is proposed by Robinson,
and it makes excellent sense in the context,
especially if he is
right in identifying the bond with "our written
agreement to keep
the Law, our certificate of debt to it," which
man's failure to keep
the Law has turned into an acknowledgment of
bankruptcy. It is
this bond, he says, representing the power which the
Law holds
over the confessed Law-breaker, rather than the Law
itself, which
Paul
views as canceled by God in Christ.5
But one could accept Robinson's
rendering of to> kaq ]
h[mw?n
xeiro<grafon as "the bond which
stood in our name" with greater
alacrity if such a sense for kata< with the genitive were
more
Christ as Conqueror and
Reconciler 295
securely established. The normal sense of kata< with the genitive
is "against," and the rendering
"the bond which was against us"
could be accepted without question here were it not
that it seems
to be tautologous with the following adjectival
clause o{ h#n
u[penanti<on
h[mi?n,
"(the bond) which was contrary to us." Once
again the hypothesis of an underlying hymn on the
victory of the
cross has been invoked -- the clause "which was
contrary to us"
could have been added by Paul to make the character
of the bond
more explicitly clear6 — but this writer
is reluctant to introduce
this deus ex
machina.
One must also take account of the
dative toi?j do<gmasin
attached to xeiro<grafon. This writer has
translated this as a
dative of accompaniment: "the bond, ordinances
and all." Moule
makes much the same point by speaking of "the
document with
its decrees (meaning, apparently, a document
containing, or
consisting of, decrees).”7 This takes toi?j do<gmasin in the same
sense as the parallel e]n
do<gmasin
in Ephesians 2:15. But if the
words are rendered "ordinances and all" or
"consisting of ordi-
nances," is this not equating the bond with the
Law itself? Yes.
There
is no doubt a natural reluctance to think of the Law itself as
being blotted out by God; but one must remember the
different
ways in which Paul speaks of the Law of God. If the
Law is viewed
as the revelation of God's will, the reflection of
His character,
summed up in the injunction, "You shall be holy,
for I the LORD
your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2), then the Law is
eternal and
unchangeable, holy, righteous, and
good (cf. 1 Tim. 1:8). Moule
distinguishes this
"revelatory" sense of "Law" in the writings of
Paul
from its legalistic sense, and he uses this distinction to give
a satisfactory answer to the question whether, in
Paul's thought,
Christ
abrogated the Law or not. "Paul," he says, "saw Christ as
the fulfilment
of the law, when law means God's revelation of
Himself
and of His character and purpose; but as the condemna-
tion and
termination of any attempt to use law
to justify oneself."8
Those
who undertook to observe the Law either as a means of
getting right with God or as the way to higher
attainment in
spiritual experience soon found that the Law,
instead of helping
them, bore witness against them.
Perhaps the earliest commentary on these words
in Colos-
sians is Paul's statement in Ephesians 2:15 that
Christ has
"abolished in His flesh the law of commandments consisting of
ordinances." There he is speaking of the
removal of the barrier
that formerly separated Jews from Gentiles, but in
saying that
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Bibliotheca Sacra — October-December
1984
Christ
"abolished . . . the law of commandments" he goes as far as
anything that he says in Galatians 3:19–4:4 or 2
Corinthians
3:7-16.
To be sure, the verb "abolish" (katarge<w) is not used of the
abrogation of the old order in Galatians as it is
in 2 Corinthians
and Ephesians, but the same idea is expressed in
other words.
And
if it be asked how these forthright statements can be
squared with Romans 3:31 — where Paul says that
through faith
we do not "abolish" (katarge<w) the Law but rather
establish it —
the answer can only be that in Romans 3:31
"Law" bears its
revelatory sense.
The canceled bond of Colossians 2:14, then,
seems to be the
Law,
bearing witness against those who tried to use it as the way
to justification or sanctification. Its
cancellation is expressed in
two figures: it has been blotted out, and it has
been nailed to the
cross. The latter figure is specially bold and vivid.
It has some-
times been explained in terms of an alleged
"ancient custom of
cancelling bonds by striking a nail through the
writing."9 These
words are by John Pearson, 17th-century bishop of
the alleged custom does not appear to be attested
before the 16th
century, and probably originated in an inference
drawn by some
reader from this very text. Deissmann thinks of the
cancellation
of a document by crossing it out with a large X
(the Greek verb for
this action is xia<zw, from the name of the
letter chi).10 But there
is no necessary connection between the cross (stauro<j) of Christ
and the shape of the letter X. Field thinks of the
custom of
hanging up spoils of war in temples,11 but it is unlikely that any
such analogy was in Paul's mind.12
What the metaphor says is that Jesus took the
damning
indictment and nailed it to His cross — presumably
as an act of
triumphant defiance in the face of those
blackmailing powers
that were holding it over men and women as a means
of com-
manding their allegiance. If there is an analogy
here, it may lie in
the fact that Jesus" own accusation was fixed
to His cross. Just as
His
own indictment was fastened there, says Paul, so he takes the
indictment drawn up against his people and nails it
to His cross.
His
victorious passion sets them free from their bankruptcy and
bondage. In the words of Krishna Pal's hymn:
Jesus for thee a body takes,
Thy guilt assumes, thy fetters breaks,
Discharging all thy dreadful debt —
And canst thou then such love forget?
Christ as Conqueror and
Reconciler 297
But more than that is involved in the victory of
Christ. By His
Cross
He releases His people not only from the guilt of sin but also
from its hold over them: "He breaks the power
of canceled sin," as
the hymn writer put it. Besides blotting out the
record of their
indebtedness, He has also conquered
those forces which used
the record as a means of controlling them. "He
stripped the
principalities and powers and made a
public exhibition of them."
But what is the force of the verb "He
stripped"? The form
used is the aorist participle middle (a]pekdusa<menoj). In verbs
denoting the putting on or off of clothes, the
active voice usually
implies the dressing or undressing of someone
else, while the
middle implies the dressing or undressing of oneself.
Attempts
have accordingly been made to find this force of the
middle voice
here. What was it that Jesus stripped off from
Himself?
The Greek fathers, who read the Greek New
Testament in
their native language, generally took "the
principalities and
powers" (ta>j a]rxa>j
kai> ta>j e]cousi<aj) as the object of the verb
(to the middle voice of which they gave its full force).
Jesus,
that is to say, "stripped off from Himself the
principalities and
powers." This is the interpretation preferred by
Lightfoot: the
powers of evil beset Him around, they "clung like
a Nessus robe
about His humanity," but He tore them off and
cast them aside.
This
a]pe<kdusij of His is the prototype
for the a]pe<kdusij of His
people, accomplished in their baptism (Col. 2:11):
"in both cases
it is a divestiture of the powers of evil,"
with the material differ-
ence that with Him it was only the temptation,
whereas with
believers it is the sin as well as the temptation.13
The Latin fathers did not treat the
principalities and powers
as the object of the stripping: they regarded ta>j
a]rxa>j kai> ta>j
e]cousi<aj as accusative in
dependence on e]deigme<tisen ("exhib-
ited") and most of them understood "His
flesh" or "His body" to be
what He stripped off. So Augustine, among others,
speaks of
Christ
as "divesting Himself of His flesh" (exuens se carne).14
This
view is maintained by a number of modern exegetes. Robin-
son takes the passage to mean that Jesus, by
divesting Himself of
His
flesh, laid aside the only medium by which the hostile forces
had any chance of exercising control over Him, and
in this way
demonstrated their impotence.15
But of the Latin fathers, Hilary and Jerome
understood the
sense to be that Jesus stripped off the
principalities and
powers.16 They did not disregard
the force of the Greek middle
voice, but interpreted it as denoting here not
something done to
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1984
oneself but something done in one's own
interest. That is to say,
Jesus,
in His own interest (and in the interest of His people),
disarmed the principalities and powers, depriving
them of their
strength. Among modern commentators Lohmeyer17
and
Schweizer18
hold this interpretation. "These angel-powers," says
Percy,
"have been deprived of all their former strength through
the removal of the charges which the law brought
against men
and therewith also of the demands of the law
itself."19 This is the
interpretation to which this writer is
disposed to adhere, but
with the awareness that one of the others may be
right. This is
indeed a knotty "Colossian problem."
But what is to be said of Christ's making a
"public exhibition"
of the defeated powers? The verb deigmati<zw, or the com-
pound paradeigmati<zw, could well have been
used to describe
what was done to Jesus Himself, when He was exposed
to public
humiliation on the cross. The compound is used in
Hebrews 6:6
of the action of those who "crucify to
themselves the Son of God
afresh, and put Him to an open shame" (KJV). The
implication of
Paul's
wording then may be that Jesus, by the victory of the
Cross,
turned the tables on His spiritual assailants; their power-
lessness, not His, was publicly exposed.
Hanson draws attention to the use of paradeigmati<zw in the
Septuagint
of Numbers 25:4, which indicates that the ringlead-
ers of the Baal Peor apostasy were "hanged up
in the sun before
the Lord." Hanson finds a typological
reference to that occurrence
in the present passage. "Moses punished the
rulers by hanging
them . . . on a tree, whereas Christ overcame the
powers by
Himself hanging on a tree."20 It is an ingenious argument, which
would be rather more convincing if cu<lon ("tree") and
not stauro<j
("cross") had been used by Paul in Colossians 2:15.
As for the phrase "triumphing over
them," this is one of two
instances of the verb qriambeu<w in the New Testament;
in both it
governs an object in the accusative. The other
instance is 2
Corinthians
2:14, "thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads
us in triumph" (qriambeu<onti
h[ma?j).
But those who are led in
triumph are apparently not the defeated captives
but the con-
queror's retinue, joyfully acclaiming him with
shouts of "Io
triumphe!" It has been argued that in
Colossians 2:15 the princi-
palities and powers are similarly engaged, that
they are the
heavenly host, celebrating Christ's victory.21
But this seems to be
incompatible with the context. It is
more natural to view the
principalities and powers here as the
defeated foes, driven in
Christ as Conqueror and
Reconciler 299
front of the triumphal chariot as involuntary and
impotent wit-
nesses to their conqueror's superior might.22
The Cross of Christ, in short, was the answer to
the specious
"philosophy" with which the minds of the Colossian
Christians
were being beguiled. How absurd it was to pay
tribute to those
forces which, it was held, controlled the way from God
to this
world and back from this world to God! That way was
now
controlled by one person -- by Him who vindicated
His sovereign-
ty over the principalities and powers. Their
envious hostility to
human beings could no longer be indulged; they had
been paci-
fied by One stronger than themselves. Whatever power
they once
exercised, they were now the "weak and
beggarly elements" that
Paul
declares them to be in Galatians 4:9.
A Message for Today
When Paul says in Colossians 1:15 that all
things were cre-
ated through Christ, "things in heaven and
things on earth,
visible and invisible," he might have
added, had appropriate
Greek
words been available in his day, "personal and imperson-
al." If it is asked whether the spiritual
forces which Christ
vanquished on the Cross are to be regarded as
personal or imper-
sonal, the answer is probably "both."
Whatever forces there are, of
either kind, that hold human souls in bondage, Christ
has
shown Himself to be their Master, and those who are
united to
Him by faith need have no fear of them.
One may think of all the influences that compel
people to act
in certain ways. The influence of inherited and
indwelling sin is
known; the gospel tells explicitly how that influence
can be over-
come. But there are other influences which make
people act in
ways which, in reflective moods, their conscience
and reason may
disapprove. The current climate of opinion,
accepted prac-
tices which are ethically dubious, the pressure of
conformity to
peer groups, the desire for status or security —
these and other
factors may operate without a person being
greatly aware of
them. But if he suddenly becomes conscious that he
is being
moved by them to adopt standards which are less than
Christian,
then he should recognize these influences to be
inimical forces
from which he must seek deliverance — and the
deliverance is
available; it has already been secured.
Many people are acutely conscious of being
involved in situa-
tions from which their moral sense recoils, but they
are at a loss
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1984
to see what can be done effectively to resolve
such entanglements.
Apart
from the gospel, they might well think of themselves as
puppets in the hands of a blind and unfriendly
fate. And they may
reason, what difference does it make in the end
whether they
resist and are crushed immediately, or acquiesce and
are
crushed a little later?23
These may be impersonal forces or demons under
the power
of Satan, the personal "prince of the power
of the air" (Eph. 2:2).
Individuals
whose faith rests in Christ the Conqueror will not
underestimate the potency and
malignity of such forces, but they
will recognize them to be vanquished forces. Christ
crucified and
risen is Lord of all. True, believers do not as yet
see all things put
under Him, but to be united to Him by faith is to
share His victory
here and now, and to enjoy liberation from the
forces He has
overcome.
The consummation of Christ's victory is bound up
with the
reconciling work which He has effected on the Cross.
His victory
is seen in the lives of believers, who are
reconciled to God through
Him
and are now on the Lord's side in the conflict of the ages.
Because
the decisive battle has been fought and won, they know
that the ultimate issue is not in doubt. At present,
their lives are
hid with Christ in God, and when Christ their life
is manifested,
they will be manifested with Him in glory (Col.
3:4).
But that is not the whole story. The letter to
the Colossians
has as its companion and sequel the letter to the
Ephesians. If
Christ
fills the cosmic role ascribed to Him in Colossians, what
part is played in this cosmic role by those who are
united to Him,
"the church which is His body" (Eph. 1:22-23)? To this
question
Ephesians
provides the answer.
The church, in Ephesians, is God's masterpiece
of recon-
ciliation: it comprises those who have been
individually recon-
ciled to God through Christ and who also have been
reconciled
through the Cross of Christ to each other
"in one body" (Eph.
2:14-16).
Through this masterpiece of reconciliation "the
princi-
palities and powers in the heavenly places"
are intended to learn
"the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph.3:10) by which He
conceived
"the plan of the mystery hidden for ages" (Eph. 3:9).
This plan, to
be realized in the fullness of time, contemplates
the uniting in
Christ
of "all things . . . things in heaven and things on earth"
(Eph.
1:10). The church, despite all its limitations which are at
present so obvious, is God's advance model of
the wider and more
comprehensive fellowship of
reconciliation which is yet to be
Christ as Conqueror and
Reconciler 301
realized. More than that, the church, as the body
of Christ, is
God's
agency for bringing this comprehensive fellowship into
being. God's plan to sum all things up in Christ
involves the
ministry and witness of those who are already in
Christ.
When
Paul told the Corinthian Christians that, because of
their spiritual immaturity, he had to feed them with
milk and not
with solid food, he declared that among the mature
he has a
wisdom to impart — "the wisdom of God in a
mystery, the hidden
wisdom which God decreed before the ages for our
glory" (1 Cor.
2:7).
If the exposition of this wisdom is not provided in the
Corinthian
correspondence, is there any place in the Pauline
writings where it may be found? There is — in
Colossians and
Ephesians. Schlier finds it in Ephesians.24
True; but there would
have been no letter to the Ephesians had there not
first been a
letter to the Colossians.
Editor's Note
This is the fourth in a series of four articles
delivered by the author as the
W.
H.
ber 1-4, 1983.
Notes
1
Unless otherwise noted the translations of Greek verses are the author's.
2
F. F. Bruce, "The ‘Christ Hymn’ of Colossians 1:15-20, Part 2 of Colossian
Problems,"
Bibliotheca Sacra 141 (April--June
1984):109-10.
3
J. B. Lightfoot,
don: Macmillan and Co., 1879;
n.d.),
p. 185.
4
Cf. Ralph P. Martin, "Reconciliation and Forgiveness in the Letter to the
Colossians,"
in Reconciliation and Hope, ed. R. J.
Banks (
Press,
1974), pp. 116-23.
5
J. A. T. Robinson, The Body (London: SCM Press, 1952), p. 43.
6
Martin, "Reconciliation and Forgiveness," pp. 116-20.
7
C. F. D. Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (
bridge University Press, 1953), p. 45.
8
C. F. D Moule, "Obligation in the Ethic of Paul," in Christian History and
Interpretation, eds. W. R. Farmer, C.
F. D. Moule, and R. R. Niebuhr (New
9
John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed
(1659; reprint,
Press,
1890), p. 373.
10 Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, trans. L. R. M. Strachan, rev.
ed.
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 333.
11
Francis Field, Notes on the Translation
of the New Testament (
12
Mention should be made of the interpretation of this passage in the Valen-
tinian Gospel of Truth, according to which Jesus on
the cross published the
Father's
testamentary edict, contained in "the living book of the living" (trans.
302 Bibliotheca Sacra — October-December 1984
G.
W. MacRae, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. J.
M. Robinson
[
history of interpretation, throws no light on
Paul's meaning.
13
Lightfoot,
14 Augustine Epistle
149.
15
Robinson, The Body, pp. 41-42.
16
For the Old Latin exuens se (as a rendering
of a]pekdusa<menoj) Hilary read
exuens and Jerome substituted exspolians.
17
Ernest Lohmeyer, Der Brief an die
Kolosser (
Ruprecht,
1953), p. 119.
18
Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians, trans. A.
Chester (Min-
neapolis:
19
Ernest Percy, Die Probleme der Kolosser —
and Epheserbriefe (
C.
W. K. Gleerup, 1946), p. 98.
20
Anthony T. Hanson, Studies in Paul's
Technique and Theology (
S.
P. C. K., 1974), p. 153 et passim.
21 , Cf. W. Carr, Angels and Principalities (
Press,
1981), p. 63.
22
The accusative with the verb qriambeu<w is attested in both
senses (both for
the victor's followers and for his defeated foes).
23
Cf. G. H. C. Macgregor, "Principalities and Powers: The Cosmic Background
of
much the same effect from A. D. Galloway, The Cosmic Christ (
24
Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser, 5th ed. (
Verlag,
1965), pp. 21-22.
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